


Long Thrash

by A_Garbage_Bag



Category: The Last of Us
Genre: Alternate Universe - Foster Family, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, No Smut, POV Multiple, Stupid!Jesse, everybody lives except sarah sorry queen, fuck you neil druckmann, i am the captain now
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:46:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24906292
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/A_Garbage_Bag/pseuds/A_Garbage_Bag
Summary: Joel finds a homeless, starving Ellie, stuck in an alley on a frozen night. Soon after, he takes her in as a foster daughter. In the relative comfort of her new life, Ellie sorts out her complicated past and reconsiders her cynical worldview. Meanwhile, Joel struggles with his own past and with his second chance at fatherhood. Tess sees fragments of her own life in Ellie's, and works to ensure that Ellie knows there is still light, somewhere in this world.title is from the lovely poem "First Lesson" by Phillip Booth.
Relationships: Ellie & Joel (The Last of Us), Ellie & Tess (The Last of Us), Joel/Tess (The Last of Us)
Comments: 29
Kudos: 228





	1. World Spins Madly On

**Author's Note:**

> CW for occasional suicidal thoughts throughout work  
> (please note this may well be updated as the story continues)

The grime-blasted streets— the Alabama license plates— the rivers of rainwater— sidewalks splattered in shadow— the nine P.M. moonlight— Joel’s brown jacket, dampened and darkened by rain. 

All these details, soaked into the now-translucent memory of the moment when he first saw her. That pink hoodie draped over her thin teenage frame; emaciated and visibly shivering; sat beside an AC unit in a dirty alleyway, her legs pulled up to her chest so that the umbrella above her covered her completely. Her dark wet hair sticking to her forehead. 

He was shivering, too. It was cold out here. And lonely. Almost no one on the sidewalks. The city might as well have been empty except for him and the homeless girl. Well; the girl he assumed was homeless.

So small. Young. She could almost be her.

“What are you looking at?”

Her voice was dim, but audible. He didn’t respond. Too deep in his thoughts.

Goddamn. She could almost be her.

“I said what the fuck are you looking at?”

He blinked and realized he had been staring. Frozen in the opening to the alleyway. He unstuck himself and walked away. 

There was water pooling in his shoes. At least she had some sort of shelter. Shit. He should get some of that. 

He walked down the street, searching for the diner he’d come into town to go to, the one he had gone to a million times before on sleepless nights like this. This rain made it hard to see any distance in front of him. It was like wandering through a vague, half-remembered dream.

He tried to push it to other things, but his mind kept rolling back to that girl. Why was she out there alone? In rain this heavy? Weather this cold? That was no way for a kid to—

He caught himself before he started really feeling bad. There was nothing he could do.

The appearance of windows on his left snapped him out of his thoughts. Large rectangles, glowing almost orange, lined up side-by-side, revealing the quiet world within the brick walls. The view was muted by the rain.

He ducked inside through the red door. A warm wash of relief. 

“Welcome to The Ugly Rhino Diner, open twenty-four hours for your convenience,” the young man behind the bar said. He looked up. “What can I get— oh shit, Joel! My man.”

“Michael.”

“Haven’t seen you in a while. You want the usual?”

“Mhm.”

Michael set to making his coffee. Joel walked across the room and sat down at the bar. Rain pounded heavy against the windows. He still couldn't shake the image of that girl from his head.

Michael placed a steaming cup of coffee on the bar. Joel drew three dollar bills from his wallet and handed them over.

“You know you overcharge.”

Michael put the money shut the register drawer. “It’s only business.” 

“Yeah, okay.” Joel took a sip.

“Worth it though, isn’t it? Damn near threw my back out making that one.”

Joel took a full swig, scalding his throat in the most pleasant way imaginable. “It ain't bad. How’re, uh, you an’ Neil doing?”

“Ah… we’ve been worse. But, uh, we’ve been thinking about taking some time apart. Both our lives have been crazy recently.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“Just life. How’s Tess?”

“Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Good.”

“Great." 

"Yeah.

"What do you think about entropy?”

“What?”

“Entropy. The fact that even the most beautiful things will eventually grow old and decay into absolute nothingness.”

“My brain is not functioning good enough for this.”

“Oh, the insomnia coming back?”

Joel sighed. “Yup. Worse this time.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. But hey, we’re always open.”

They remained in silence for a few moments. Then Michael clapped. “Well, I’ve gotta take a piss. If anyone comes in, tell ‘em I’ll be out soon.”

“Sure.”

He swung through the bar flap and disappeared off into the bathroom, and Joel was left alone. Bathing in the light and warmth of this place. Dry in his solitude. Clean and warm. 

His chest tightened. Something like guilt. 

“Goddammit,” he muttered, as he set his coffee down and walked out the door.

* * *

Ellie was thinking about dying again.

It was that permanent, pervasive thought. It was as inseparable from her as the scar over her eyebrow. It was brought on just as much by homelessness as by the group home, as by military school, the shards of her shattered past and the cold of her hopeless present. It was brought on by all her petty crimes, every power-tripping police officer and every bastard who’s robbed her blind, all the awful flaws in human nature, the awful flaws of her own person.

The things beyond her control and the things within that had led her equally through life, led her freezing to this alleyway. Trapped by commodified personhood and absolute solitude.

It was all an overcast sky that greyed the sunlight. 

She didn’t know how long it had been raining. But she had been cold a long time.

* * *

Joel had been hoping she wouldn’t still be there. 

But she was, because of course she was. Where else could she go?

He stood in the mouth of the alleyway once again. Its dark throat threatening to swallow him whole if he took one more step. 

“What the fuck, dude?”

She was completely dark now. The rain had only gotten heavier since he’d first seen her. 

“Why are you back here? Don’t come any closer.”

Before he could process her sentence, Joel took a step closer. 

The girl immediately stood up and flashed a switchblade from out of nowhere.

“Don’t come any fucking closer!”

He put his hands up. “I ain’t here to—”

“I fucking mean it! Back off.”

Joel didn’t think that she would hurt him. But that blade was sharp. And very long.

He backed away.

“I ain’t here to hurt you,” he said. “There’s a diner just a short walk—” he pointed to the left— “that way. It’s warm.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

“You don't have to go with me. I’m walking away in a few seconds here. But it’s warm. And they got food.”

“I don’t fucking care. Get out of here.”

Her knife hand was trembling. From the cold or from something else.

“Okay,” he said. 

He walked away.

* * *

Ellie leaned out of the alleyway. She looked left and right— no trace of the bearded Texan creep. 

Now that that motherfucker’s gone.

She walked back to her makeshift shelter— a stolen umbrella wedged in between her side and a stack of concrete blocks— and sat down. Her worthless shield against the elements. 

Fuck, she was soaked.

Heh. Soaked. That’s, like, the sex word. 

She saw then that the cold was really getting to her. Normally her jokes would be better than that.

She'd find warmth if she could. There was nothing she'd love more than that.

But stores kicked her out. Police told her to get lost. The homeless shelter was full. She didn’t trust CPS after the last shithole they dumped her into. People robbed her. People tricked her. She would love some fucking help, but she was safest on her own.

But she had to get somewhere warm. This AC unit was not cutting it. She wasn’t even sure it was on anymore— it had been when she’d first got here, but now everything just felt cold. But where would she go? 

What if that guy was being honest? 

She flipped out her switchblade. Wiped away the raindrops and looked at her slivered reflection. Her grimy freckled skin. Her pale green eyes. 

What was there to see anymore? Just the brutal concrete of the city. The bitter faces of passing people. Liars and psychos. Hearses and ambulances. 

She could just do it now. 

The switchblade was sharp, it would do the trick. It would be so easy... 

But she thought of Hannah. She thought of her mother.

She thought _no._

She thought _Keep fighting._

And she stood up—

* * *

Joel was leaving the diner when the girl arrived, clutching her backpack under her jacket and holding the umbrella.

“You made it,” he said.

She glared at him. Went to enter the diner.

“Do you have any money?” he asked.

The door was halfway open. He could see relief building on her face at the heat emanating from inside. An eighty degree oasis at the top of a frozen mountain.

“What do you care?” she said.

“Jus’ wondering.”

He turned around, as if to leave. When he heard the door close, he looked back through the glass at Michael. Michael looked at him and, when Joel nodded, said something to the girl. She laid her things out on a booth in the corner and turned to Michael. She said something. He repeated himself.

The girl hesitantly glanced back at Joel. She turned back to Michael and, Joel assumed, began making an order.

Well. That was his good deed for the year, done and done.

He walked on. That was the last he’d be seeing of that girl. In his life. Ever. 

(If only he knew.)


	2. Twelfth Night

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> apparently there are actually people reading this now so uhhhhh hi thank you for reading i hope you like it

He was proven absolutely wrong when he came back to the diner the following night and saw her in the same booth as the previous night, under a vent and next to the jukebox, mouthing along to some sadsack indie song as she wrote in a journal.

_(Self-appraise, that’s my name,  
But these tight-ass pants, with these baggy eyes;  
That see a garbage world, forever hideous,  
Forever purposeless, forever worthless…)_

“She’s here again,” Michael said.

“I saw,” Joel replied.

“She didn’t get anything this time.”

“Okay.”

“I told her it was on the house again, but she wouldn’t order anything.”

“Okay.”

“Speaking of, you owe me… thirty three dollars and seventy eight cents.”

“Christ.”

“Yeah.”

“What did she get?”

“A… cheeseburger, two pieces of bacon, two muffins—blueberry and squirrel turd—, a piece of avocado toast, a—”

“Squirrel turd?”

“Yeah. It’s a chocolate chip muffin, but here it’s called a squirrel turd muffin.”

“Why on earth…?”

“I don’t fucking know. Ask Joe.”

“Who’s Joe?”

“Founder of this place.”

“Is Joe here?”

“Not at the moment.”

“Is Joe still with us?”

“What, you mean alive?”

“Yeah.”

“He is. Well, he got busted for, uh, child porn a while back.”

“Makin’ or possessin’?”

“Both.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah. Anyways.” He held out his hand. “Twenty three dollars.”

Joel scrounged thirty three dollars out of his wallet and put them in Michael’s hand.

“Seventy eight cents.”

As Joel pulled out quarters and nickels and other small financial increments from his wallet, a penny slipped from his fingers and hit the floor, wheeling across the room and, as luck would have it, stopping at the girl’s feet.

“Nice one,” she said.

Joel looked at her.

“Get it? Cause it’s a penny. And... pennies are worth one cent… But you dropped it… So it’s like a double—”

“Yea, I— I get it.”

“So why aren’t you laughing?”

“Because it ain’t funny.”

The girl shrugged. “It’s pretty funny.” She leaned back and looked out the window. 

He sighed. “Could I have my penny back?”

“Say ‘please.’”

“This is degrading.”

“I won’t do anything until you say it.”

He sighed again. “Could I please have my penny back?”

Without looking, she kicked the penny straight over to him. He picked it up and handed it to Michael.

“I’m sensing a chemistry here,” he said as he took the money.

“I’m not,” Joel replied.

* * *

And she was there the next night. And the night after. She was there each sleepless night that Joel came in, and presumably each one that he didn’t. She had become a fixture of the late-night Ugly Rhino Diner. And not a shit-smelling one either; where she was taking showers, Joel had no idea, but he was glad she was.

Michael told him that she had just slept in the booth the first night. He didn’t have the heart to kick her out. (Joel figured that even if he did, he wouldn’t have done it.) She woke up and left at seven the next morning and came back at nine that night. Michael had asked her if she planned on sleeping there again. Ellie responded by asking if that was an invitation. At midnight, she passed out in the booth again. 

Comes it at nine. Passes out around midnight. Leaves at seven. Rinse and repeat.

The few customers who came in during the timespan she was there were all regulars. At first, a few of the more uptight among them had balked at her presence; fortunately, no one who comes to an obscure inner-city diner after nine P.M. is especially uptight, and soon they all got used to her. A few had even tried talking to her, but she always found excuses to cut the conversations short.

“The fifth night I told her she had to start helping out or I couldn’t let her stay here anymore,” Michael said on the eleventh night. “She didn’t seem to mind. Now she helps wash dishes, or clean the bathrooms, or something, for an hour. The other kid who works here, Sam— they seem to be getting along well.”

“Ain’t that against some sort of child labor law?”

“What?”

“Having two kids working here at night?”

“Well, Sam doesn’t really work here. His brother does. Sam just comes around sometimes to help out. And as for Ellie, she’s earning her keep. We don’t even work her that hard.”

“Who’s Ellie?”

“Huh? Oh. Ellie’s the girl.”

Joel turned around to look at Ellie’s booth, where a boy, presumably Sam, was currently tossing grapes in her mouth.

“Ellie,” Joel repeated.

“Yep.”

Joel went back to his coffee. A few minutes later, he was walking out the door. Ellie still catching grapes and (Hell hath frozen over) laughing.

* * *

in the car.breathing in shadows.kicking at the doors.a wrong turn.locked doors.missing people.weak.a starless ocean.weaker than she had ever been.sounds in the trees.blood on the glass.rolling down her arms.what she had to do—

Ellie exhaled into the present Hell and her chest was filled with knives and her left palm was bloody from her clenched fist and she would rather be dead but god would not grant her even that one thing and she didn’t think it ever would.

She sat up to slow her mind. Like grabbing for control of a hydroplaning car. The light was familiar, the booth was familiar. She was not. This body didn’t feel like her own. Weightless. Its back slick with sweat.

She looked at the clock on the wall: 3:47. It was dark outside. 

When she touched her forehead her fingers came away sweaty. She threw on her backpack and walked across the diner. The few baggy-eyed residents of 3 A.M. looked at her like they hadn’t realized she had actually been there. Like a picture in a motel room. There and not.

She pushed the bathroom door and then remembered it was a pull. Locked the door behind her. 

It was a one-person bathroom, cleaned to pristinity by herself every other night. She stared for a few moments at the portrait of St. Francis that hadn’t been there three days ago. It was hanging above the toilet, the Saint’s impoverished eyes turned down to look at the sorry bastard taking a piss. Ellie imagined that his stigmata were like splinters under his fingernails. Always irritating. Too deep to dig out. 

She turned on the sink across from the toilet and leaned down to take a few sips from the cold stream. Her filthy throat washed clean again.

Looked into the mirror above the sink. A tear path down her right cheek; it must have fallen in her sleep.

“Fuck.” She splashed some water on her face. Looked back into the mirror at her dripping skin. Flicked her gaze back and forth between herself and the Saint.

“Burn in Hell,” she muttered. And she was not sure who she said it to.

* * *

The next night, at ten thirty P.M., Joel sat down at Ellie’s booth. Wondering what the fuck he was doing. Wondering why his head felt like it was on autopilot. Telling himself to move along. This kid shouldn’t, doesn’t, mean anything to him. He had already helped her enough. It was up to her to help herself from here. 

He was buried in his head, convincing himself to stand up when Ellie materialized in the booth across from him. It took them both a second to realize the other was there. He noticed that she was bearing a bruised right eye.

“Aren't you that guy I almost stabbed?” she said. What are you doing here?”

Damn. Straight to the point, then.

“I wanted to talk to you about something.” His brain going one way. His mouth the other.

“What do we have to talk about?”

She looked him dead in the eyes. Those pale green worlds glassed by time. The jukebox whispering some nameless lounge song.

“Have you ever talked to the police?” he asked. “About your… situation?”

Ellie scoffed. “Really? You’re here to tell me how to fix my shit?”

An excuse! Joel quickly moved to stand up. “Well, if that’s how you are I think I’ll just move—”

“Wait, wait.”

He stopped.

“I’m… Don’t leave yet.”

He hesitated. Stared his conscience in the face. Sat back down.

A few moments of silence. “I haven’t talked to the police,” she said. “And I don’t want to. Because the last time I did, I almost fucking died in the group home they stuck me in.”

Joel searched for a response. “That happened in Alabama?”

“No.”

“Oh.” He glanced at her journal. A sticker of a firefly on the cover. “So you ran away from that place?”

“I escaped.”

“Sounds like you’ve had it rough.”

“What the fuck do you want, dude?”

“I was just… gonna ask if you’ve considered trying it again.”

“Why do you care?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, at least you’re honest. First step of good communication. But no. I’m not going to talk to the cops. I can take care of myself.”

He looked at her black eye. “Yeah.” He stood up. “Alright, well. I’ll get outta your hair.”

“Yep. Your watch is broken, by the way.”

He didn’t say anything. Just walked away.

* * *

The next day, Ellie stepped into a Sunny in some part of town she had never been before and scanned the ceiling line for security cameras. She didn’t see any and that was why she loved this city. No cams in any of the gas stations. The trouble was the people. You walk in and walk out without buying anything enough times and they start getting suspicious. They start watching you and then they see when you stuff Duke’s Original Angus Beef Jerky (the best flavor) in your jacket pockets. They yell at you to drop that shit and get out and then you can’t steal shit from there anymore while that asshole’s on shift and so what do you do? You go to a different gas station.

She walked down the first aisle, scanning the shelves for anything with decent calories and some protein. Nothing. She saw a few bags of gummy worms that looked delicious but she didn’t want to take anything more than she had to. In another life maybe she’d buy those. But not this one.

She rounded the end of the aisle and began walking up the second. Looked up at the register and saw that the cashier was behind the register next to the door, staring at his phone. Skittles, packs of beer, condoms… apple slices. Don’t mind if she does. She crouched and looked up to make sure the cashier couldn’t see her. The shelf blocked his sight-line. She then swung off her backpack and dropped a bag of apple slices inside. She looked across the aisle to the other shelf and saw some beef jerky (not Duke’s, sadly), and dropped two bags of that in her pack. Then she swung on her bag and walked to the back of the store, where the beverages were kept in refrigerators. She nabbed a bottle of water and stuffed it in her pack. And that was all it could hold. She needed to get a bigger bag.

Ellie zipped up her bag and walked up to the register, where she grabbed a single box of Tic Tacs from the stand on the counter.

“Just the Tacs,” she said, pulling her wallet from her pocket.

“Two bucks,” the cashier said. He sounded entirely disinterested. 

Ellie slapped two dollar bills on the counter.

“Thanks. Oh, shit, wait.” He put his phone away. “I’m gonna need to take a look in your bag.”

Air raid sirens went off in her head. “You’re— what? Why?”

“Since we don’t got any cameras. Manager makes us look in backpacks. To make sure no one’s stealing.”

“Surely that’s against the law.”

“Look, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to worry about.”

“I’m— I have plenty to worry about. I am worrying about my fourth amendment rights. This is absurd.” She straightened up. “I want to speak to the manager.”

“He isn’t here right now.”

“What kind of shitty manager isn’t at the store at eleven in the morning?”

“I think he’s getting lunch right now.”

“Well, since there’s no higher authority to confirm that you actually do have to search my bag, I think I’ll be on my merry—”

And as she turned away to leave, something thumped to the ground at her side. Her backpack suddenly felt a little lighter. She turned to see what had fallen out. 

The water bottle lay on the ground. Laughing at her. Because of course she hadn’t zipped the bag up all the way. The bottle had slid through the open space and escaped. 

She reached back and zipped the pack up completely and then slowly turned to look at the cashier. He looked at the bottle and then at her.

She flashed him a smile and made a break out the door.

His half-hearted shouting muffled by the walls. A few people looked at her strangely as she sprinted down the street, getting away from that place as quick as she could. 

She didn’t even realize she was laughing until she was leaning against a wall, catching her breath. Uncontrollable giggles. A fire behind her face. From laughing or from fear or from anger and self-loathing and all the dead junkies she had seen lying hopeless in alleyways.

She slid down the wall and watched stormclouds gather. She was still laughing. The fire roaring inside her from day one. Her throat ashen. Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.

* * *

The man didn’t come to her table that night.

He sat at the bar, staring into his cup, swirling whatever was inside with a plastic spoon. Ellie’s distant memory, that old abstractionist, slashed vague brush strokes across her mind — a memory many years old — a brown-suited man at a table, his gaze lost in a cup. The type of man to stick around for a while and leave when the weather goes sour. She may have known him, once— but in stories like hers, fathers are more like strangers. 

He didn’t come to her table. She came to him.

“You know,” she said when she sat down next to him, “you remind me of someone.”

He jumped at her arrival. Clearly wasn't expecting her. “Jesus,” he muttered. “Do I really?”

“Yeah.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

He looked at her for a moment, then shrugged. “Funny. You almost remind me of someone.”

“Almost?”

“You ain’t quite the same.” He looked at the muted TV high on the wall behind the bar.

“As who?”

He didn’t say anything for a long time. It was raining gently outside. Finally: “Game’s on.”

Ellie was tempted to press for more. Why would he bring it up if he didn’t want to talk about it? But she didn’t. Instead: “Who’s playing?”

“Uh… Cardinals and Broncos.”

“That’s not even fair. Cardinals can fly.”

He didn’t react.

“Come on, that was funny.”

“You keep telling yourself that.” He took a drink of his coffee.

“I will.”

“Ellie!” 

Ellie jumped. She then realized that it was only Michael, greeting her as he walked behind the bar.

“Don’t think I’ve ever seen you at the bar before,” he said.

“Broadening my horizons.”

“I see. Well, you’ve met Joel, I assume.”

“Who?”

“The guy next to you.”

“Huh?” Joel said. “Oh, yeah, that’s me.”

They all looked at each other in silence.

“Well, can I get you anything, Ellie? Employee’s discount.”

“I’m good.”

“Alright, well. Let me know.”

He walked to the other end of the bar, where he struck up a conversation with a rough-looking man dressed in ragged clothing. Ellie watched them for a moment. Reminded her of the first time Michael had talked to her. It seemed like so long ago. She knew it had only been thirteen days. And she knew she should be thankful. She had a constant place to sleep now. A constant source of warmth. But for how long? For how long?

“Why’d you tell me about this place?” she asked Joel.

“Guess I wanted to help you.”

“Did you know they were so… homeless-bastards friendly?”

“Had no idea. I mean, I knew they were good folk, but I didn’t know they were gonna let you stay here so long.”

“Pleasant surprise.”

“Yeah.”

“For once.”

“Yeah.”

Ellie tapped her fingers on the bar and prepared to do something she rarely did. She took a breath. “Sorry for how I was last night. That was— I was not in the best of moods.”

“I figured.”

“And, uh— that’s all I got.”

“What?”

“That’s all the apologizing I got in me for today.”

A half-smile appeared on Joel’s face. He promptly took a swig of coffee.

“See? I am funny!”

“Nah.”

“I’m hilarious.”

“No.”

“I’m hilarious.”

“You repeat yourself.”

“Yourself.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing.” She looked at the TV. “Who’s winning?”

“Score’s on the screen.”

“There’re also two million other things on the screen.”

“It’s at the top. The two numbers. Broncos have 21—”

“Oh! And the Cardinals have 13.”

“Right.”

“So the Cardinals are winning.”

“What? No. It ain’t golf.”

“Shit. So the Broncos are winning?”

“Yeah. I reckon they’re gonna win the game.”

“Why?”

“Broncos always beat the Cardinals.”

“Sounds like the Cardinals need to step up their game.”

“They sure as Hell do. I mean, don’t really care who wins this one, but games aren’t nearly as exciting when you know who’s gonna win.”

“Yeah. It’s like the American Revolution.”

“What?”

“I mean, you already know who wins. There’s no thrill in reading about it.”

“Mm. I see. I guess it is kinda like that.”

“It is totally like that. Not just ‘kinda.’ Apologize.”

“What?”

“Apologize for doubting my genius.”

Joel laughed. “I apologize.”

“There you go. And you laughed. So apologize for saying I’m not funny.”

“Well… no. I can’t apologize because it’s true.”

“Hamilton said that.”

“What? Oh, Lord. Are you a theater kid?”

“Absolutely not. Don’t ever disrespect me like that ever again.”

“Okay,” he said through a chuckle. “Sorry.”

“I didn’t tell you to apologize.”

“Sorry. Dammit.”

“Apologize.”

“You’re a damn nightmare.”

“I am Lucifer manifest.” She yawned. “Well, anyways. I should be hitting the hay now. Got a long day of eating cockroaches and drinking greywater ahead of me tomorrow.”

“Rats probably have more calories in ‘em.”

She stood up. “Oh, funny guy.”

“Damn right.”

"Well. I'll be here all week. Ciao."

She walked over to her booth and was asleep within ten minutes.

* * *

Ellie dreamed that she was lying in a well-lit basement. Linoleum everything and shallow water on the floor wetting her clothes. She was hardly alive and the walls were shaking. A faceless person came up some stairs through a doorway at the back of the basement. They didn’t say anything at all but they picked her up and pulled her towards the doorway and she wanted to fight back but she didn’t have her knife and she was was so cold and she heard pale groans from down the stairs and she couldn’t move anything and just as they reached the bottom she woke up sweaty and she had this dream and she had it almost every night and it never went away and she didn’t think it ever would.

* * *

Joel and Ellie talked almost every night. First for three minutes, then for thirty. Long conversations, but never bloated. 

The diner glowing against the shadow. The Rainbow Tunnel down the street. Ellie with her half-shining eyes. Joel with his tired ones. The soggy winter sky. 

Old worlds wriggling out of total oblivion.

* * *

“Why do you come here every night?”

“Can’t sleep.”

“So you come drink coffee… to treat insomnia.”

“It’s decaf.”

“Ugh.”

“What?”

“Coffee’s already disgusting. Why would you take away the one benefit? At that point you’re just drinking wet dirt.”

“Coffee ain’t disgusting.”

“Yes it fucking is.”

“It is not.”

“It is.”

“It’s God’s truest gift to mankind.”

“I hate you.”

* * *

“Is that a comic book?”

“No.”

“Looks like it is.”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“What’s it about?”

“The life and death of Friedrich Nietzsche.”

“Seriously?”

“It’s about this, uh, superhero named Savage Starlight. She saves people from evil aliens and shit. I’m not sure, I just started reading.”

“How many of those do you have?”

“Just this one.”

“Mm. Reading comic books never was my thing.”

“I can’t imagine reading is your thing.”

“Hey now.”

Ellie smirked. The closest thing to a smile since he’d met her.

* * *

“So are you married?”

“Married? No. That kinda thing ain’t for me. I have a… partner, but marriage isn’t on the agenda for either of us.”

“Too cynical for it?”

“Heh. I guess. Hasn’t turned out well for me in the past.”

“Yeah. I understand.”

* * *

One night, just as he was leaving:

“Hey, thank you,” Ellie said.

Joel turned. “For what?”

“For paying for me that first night.”

“Oh. ‘Course. Uh, Michael tells me you haven’t ordered anything since.”

“Yeah.”

“Why not?”

She shrugged. “Not hungry.”

She had her sleeves rolled up. He could see clear the bones in her arms.

* * *

Beside Tess in bed that night, he asked her the question that had been simmering for the past few weeks, growing more unavoidable with every conversation:

“How do you feel about fostering?”

He had done some of that “thinking” that seemed to be all the rage these days, and had come to the conclusion that he had to at least try and help Ellie off the streets. Yes, he had helped her find a place to sleep, but she couldn’t stay there forever. She wasn’t going to school. She didn’t have a stable source of anything. She was keeping herself alive, and could clearly take care of herself. But for how long?

And at bottom: that could be Sarah. Just change the hair a little. The face. That’s her, starving and homeless.

His conscience cracking his walls.

Tess blinked and put down the Outdoor Life issue she had been skimming. “Fostering?” she said. “As in a child?”

“More a young adult.”

“How old?”

“Thirteen. Fourteen.”

“That’s a child, Texas.”

“The one I have in mind ain’t a normal kid.”

“Well. You’re sure you can do that?”

“Yeah.”

“I mean, Sarah…”

“Tess. I can do it.”

“Okay. I believe you.”

“Do you want to do it?”

“It’s… it’s a big decision.”

“It is.”

“I’m gonna take some time to think about it.”

“Okay.”

“Get back to you in, say, three days.”

“Okay.”

“Alright.”

* * *

Four days later, she said that she was in.

Joel didn’t believe it at first. Maybe he didn’t want to. He explained the complexities of the situation to her. The girl was a fourteen year old homeless kid who technically still belonged to a group home somewhere that wasn’t Alabama. There would be intricate legalities involved. 

“Well,” Tess said. “In for a penny, in for a pound.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Full send.” He just blinked. “Go the whole hog. No backing out now.”

“You should’ve just said that last one first.”

“You’re an idiot, Texas.”

“No. I’m an American.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> any time there’s a song in the story i’ll put the name down here in the end notes. and you should listen to them, because i have impeccable taste and they’re all gonna be great songs. in this case, it’s:  
> No More Shame, No More Fear, No More Dread by AJJ


	3. Zigzagging Towards the Light

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hello i am no good at replying to comments but believe me i am reading them over and over and me and my serotonin receptors thank you!

“Would I ever try foster care again?” Ellie repeated. “No, probably not. I mean, maybe? I don’t know. Hasn’t turned out too well for me in the past.”

“But you can’t just stay here until you’re grown.”

“Well, with the power of self-belief anything’s possible.” Ellie narrowed her eyes. “Why are you even bringing this up?”

“Well, it’s, uh… see…” He scratched his head. Goddammit. All his preparation had gone out the window. Dammit. _Use your noggin, Joel._ “Me and my partner… have been thinking about… taking in a kid… to, uh, to foster.”

“So… what you’re dancing around saying is—”

“I was thinkin’ that you’d maybe be interested. At least in considerin'.”

Ellie took a bite of the Cliff Bar in her hand. “And you’d be the… the stand-in babbo.”

Joel blinked. “I don’t know what that means.”

She rubbed her right eyebrow. “I’d have to see the house first.”

“‘Course.”

“Maybe hang out for a while.”

“‘Course.”

“Well.” She took the finishing bite and stuffed the wrapper in her pocket. “When are you home?”

“Oh— I get off work at 4 every day. Tess gets home around 5.”

“So if I were to show up at 5:30…”

“That’d work.”

“Nice. I’ll be there.”

“What? How are you gonna get there?”

“I’ll walk.”

“No. It’s too far. I could drive—”

“No,” Ellie said immediately. “No. I’ll walk or take a bus or something. What’s your address?”

* * *

Ellie showed up at the front door of 733 Francis Way at 5:32 the next evening. Bearing her backpack and shadowed by the darkening sky in a surprisingly suburban neighborhood. She was expecting something a little more country-accent yee-haw from Joel. Don't judge a book by it's cover, she guessed.

She knocked on the door.

After a few seconds, a rather angry-looking woman opened the door. 

“You’re Ellie?” she said.

“That’s what they call me.”

“I’m Tess. Come in. I’ve heard… not a lot about you, actually. Just that you’re homeless and fourteen years old.”

“My defining characteristics.” Ellie stepped inside and found herself standing in a small foyer. A staircase rolled down against the right wall, coming to a stop just before a door to the living room. On the opposite wall, there was a door that led to a home office. Through the hall running straight ahead she could see a kitchen, in the far wall of which a screen door gave passage to a porch.

She shrugged off her bag. “Where should I put this?”

“The newel post is fine.”

Ellie looked at her. “The fuckin’ what?”

“The post at the end of the banister.” She gestured to it. “With the little sphere thing on top.”

“That’s called a newel post?”

“Yeah.”

“I had no idea.” Ellie looped her bag’s grab handle around the top of the “newel post” and stepped back. “Learn something new every day.”

At that moment, Joel came down the stairs. He paused when he saw Ellie, and then said simply:

“You made it.”

“Did you think I wouldn’t?”

He reached the bottom of the stairs. “Wasn’t sure that you would. What with you walking and all.”

“You gotta have more faith in me, buckaroo. I’m tougher than I look.”

“Hope you’re smarter, too.”

Ellie put a hand over her chest. “Ouch. I’ll never recover from that one.”

“This is what I’m gonna have to deal with?” Tess said.

“Hey, feel free to poison me at _any_ time,” Ellie said.

“I’ll keep it in mind. You wanna see the house?”

“That’s why I’m here.”

And so they showed her the house. They showed her the living room (the fireplace filled with wood, the TV on the wall above, the guitar on the hearth, the old couch); they showed her the kitchen (the stained table, framed (occasionally signed) photography on the wall, the strangely high-end toaster); they showed her the office (Tess’s office, Ellie was told). Upstairs, they showed her around the master bedroom (the only bedroom); the master (only) bathroom. The unused attic, empty aside from a wide desk under the window.

As they were beginning to go back downstairs, Tess hung back.

“Be sure to show her her bedroom,” she said. “I gotta take a shit.”

The two watched her disappear into the bathroom. 

“I like her,” Ellie said.

“So do I.”

Ellie grimaced. “That’s so gross.”

They went back downstairs, into the kitchen. 

“We’ve already been here,” Ellie said.

"I had no idea. Talk about a photographic memory."

"Okay, don't be an asshole."

Joel walked over to the corner of the room. In the wall was a plain white door that Ellie hadn’t noticed before. 

“Your room would be down here,” Joel said.

He opened up the door to reveal a steep, dim flight of stairs. Crashing into the floor at the bottom. A door in the left wall.

“In the basement?”

“Mm. Is that alright?”

“I’m, uh, not the biggest fan of basements.”

“It ain’t that bad. Just take a look at it, at least.”

She hesitated, and then nodded. She gestured at the stairs in a “you go first” motion. 

Joel quickly descended the stairs and swung through the left doorway. He flipped the lights on.

“Now it ain’t much to look at yet, but Tess was thinkin’ we could go to the store or somethin’ and find…” He realized Ellie wasn’t behind him and leaned back through the doorway. 

She was cautiously descending the stairs, taking it step by step. One hand in her back left pants pocket.

“You alright?”

She looked up. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m just… yeah.” She sped up a bit. Jumped the last two steps.

“It's steep,” Joel said.

“Yeah,” Ellie breathed. “Shall we?”

Joel nodded and stepped through the doorway. Ellie leaned against one of the jambs and looked around.

A small room. Pale yellow walls. An old bookcase filled with vinyls in the corner. A fossilized CRT television flipped on its back. A pile of cardboard. Some rolled-up posters in the corner. The hardwood floor. 

“Like I said, it ain’t much at the moment. Mostly just use it to store junk.”

“Yeah. Wait, why? You’ve got a whole fucking attic upstairs.”

“Easier to move junk down some stairs than through a hole in the ceiling.”

“Mm.” 

There was only one doorway, she realized, and she was standing in it.

“But like I said, we can— you can put anything you’d like in here.”

“Can I have a wall of Playboy covers?” She said, pushing off the jamb.

“Well, almost anything you’d like.”

“What if I stole some fossils from the museum and made a T-Rex down here?”

“I would turn you in.”

“You would not.”

Ellie stepped into the room.

“Hey,” she said, “that TV’s almost as old as you.”

“You’re hilarious.” 

Ellie walked over to the bookshelf. “You got any good stuff here?”

“It’s all good stuff.”

“You said you only use this place to store junk. Oh, that’s why you’re putting me down here!”

“Exactly.”

Ellie flipped through the records. “Man, that was rude.” 

Hank Williams. 

“You called me old,” Joel replied.

Johnny Cash.

“I can’t apologize because it’s true.”

Corey Feldman?

Ellie turned around and held up a vinyl of Angelic 2 the Core. “You fucking listen to this?”

Joel flushed. “This is not why I let you into my home.”

“No way. No way you listen to this. Holy shit. You said this was all good stuff.”

“It is good stuff,” he muttered.

“Dude, when the homeless kid has better taste than you, that’s when you should start getting worried.”

“What? That’s bullshit. What garbage do you listen to?”

“Ever heard of Julien Baker? Fuckin’ AJJ? Fuckin’ Pink Floyd? Fuckin’ Pearl Jam? Fuckin’—”

“Hey now, I have a Pearl Jam record and a Pink Floyd record in there.”

“Do you really?” Ellie turned to the bookcase. “Where?”

“Third level… No, third from the top… I reckon the Pearl Jam is on the far right.”

“Ah, right next to the Diamond Jelly.”

“Pardon?”

“Do you have a record player anywhere?”

“In the living room.”

“Nice. What say you we take these up and—”

She was interrupted by a crashing wave of thunder. She jumped a little.

“Goddamn,” Joel said. 

“Fuck,” Ellie muttered. “Shit.”

She dashed up the stairs far quicker than she descended and rushed over to a window in the kitchen.

The sky was getting dark and pouring rain. Lots of rain.

“Fuckshit.”

“Damn,” Joel said.

“I should, uh, get going before this gets worse.” She went to grab her backpack from the stairs. “It’s been nice—”

“You’re plannin’ on walking in this weather.”

She turned to him, with a look on her face that practically said aloud _duh, old man._ “I’ve done it before.”

“You’ll freeze.”

Ellie put her hand on the doorknob. “Bus stop isn’t that far.”

“What’s going on?” a new voice asked. Tess’s, from the top of the stairs.

“I’m appreciating your hospitality and announcing my departure.” Ellie said.

“Ellie’s bein’ stupid,” Joel said simultaneously.

“Hey!”

Tess reached the bottom of the stairs and leaned against the wall. “Not the best weather for walking, is it?”

“Yeah, well, I’m kind of a badass, so—”

“At least stay until it passes,” she said.

“I can take care of myself.”

A brutal crash of thunder, like God dropping a dinner plate. She turned and looked out the glass panes in the door. The rain was falling so hard she couldn’t see the street, which, if her memory served, wasn’t more than three yards from the porch.

She sighed and turned back around.

“Should probably wait this one out, though.”

* * *

Ellie snapped her fingers. “Fucking Old Spice.”

“Excuse me?” Tess said. 

After Ellie resigned herself to waiting out the storm, the three had made themselves comfortable in the living room. (Tess and Ellie on opposite ends of the couch, Joel on the recliner a few feet away.) There had been a brief conversation about what they felt like for dinner that resulted in Tess and Joel agreeing to leftovers, and Ellie deciding on whatever junk she had in her bag. They had then sat in silence for several minutes. Ellie occupied herself by trying to figure out what the house smelled like. Now, she had achieved her goal.

“Your house smells like Old Spice. Cyprus edition.”

“Is that a compliment?” Tess asked.

“If you like the smell of forest fires.”

“Ouch.”

“Sorry. Try and make it through.” She took a bite of the Cliff bar she had in her hands. “Endure and survive, baby.”

“Huh?” 

“It’s from this comic I’ve been reading.”

“That Massive Starlight lady?” Joel asked.

“Savage Starlight.”

“Ah, well, same difference.”

“Endure and survive,” Tess repeated. “I like that.”

“Massive Starlight, what’s that even mean?” Ellie said.

“No idea,” Joel replied.

“Sort of a modus operandi,” Tess said.

“Talking about her knockers?” Ellie continued.

“Her what?” Joel said.

“Her busters? Her bazookas? Her mama melons?”

“Oh, Lord. I ain’t having this conversation."

“Tess, your boyfriend’s eyes are wandering.”

“They’ve been wandering since he found out about Scarlett Johansson.”

“Ooo! Good taste, Joel!”

Joel excused himself to get a glass of water.

* * *

After thirty minutes, conversation started to fizzle out. Joel suggested, kindly, that they watch a movie to kill some time.

Which is to say, he said:

“I’m watching a movie. Get in or get lost.”

Ellie sat up at that. “Oo! What movie?”

“I was thinkin’ Rambo 3.”

“Hell yeah!” she cheered. “I love that one! It’s so terrible!”

“Absolutely not,” Tess said. “I demand Juno.”

“Juno?” Ellie turned to Tess, incredulous. “Are you serious? I didn’t take you for a cheesy indie film kinda woman.”

“I didn’t take you for a trashy ‘hoo-rah big man muscles’ action movie kinda girl.”

“It’s more complex than that,” Joel said.

“Yeah, Tess, it has layers and shit.”

“Juno has layers. Juno has way more layers than fucking Rambo. Oh, by the way, Ellie, has anyone ever told you that you kinda—”

“If you say I look like Elliot Page I will drop you.”

“—look like Elliot Page? Oh, shit.”

* * *

Seeing as the votes were two-against-one and this is a democracy, Joel put Rambo 3 into the DVD player and promptly selected Play. The three of them got comfortable (Joel with a glass of water, Ellie with a smorgasbord of Cliff Bars, Tess with a bottle of rum) and set to watching it. 

After the first three minutes, Ellie began chiming in with riffs. Incorrect dialogue, intentionally terrible puns, deep-cut references, crude jokes. After a few minutes, Tess joined in. The two’s collaboration was rough at first, but quickly settled into a solid rhythm. 

The two giggled at each other’s jokes. Ellie even dissolved into all-out laughter at some points. And although he would never admit it, Ellie saw Joel smiling the entire time.

* * *

The credits rolled and Ellie looked at up the clock on the wall: 8:01. She had been here for going on three hours now and the rain hadn’t let up and it was pitch black outside. She suspected, unhappily, that the downpour wouldn’t be going away anytime soon. That meant a decision. Should she stay or should she go?

She giggled at her own joke and Tess’s attention swung over to her. Joel’s didn’t, because Joel was unconscious in the recliner and had been since the third quarter of the movie.

“What’s funny?”

“Me.”

Tess looked at Ellie for a few seconds, and just as Ellie was about to make an awkward comment about her extended attention, Tess said:

“You know, you remind me of me.”

Ellie raised her eyebrows. “Do I?”

“Yeah. Me at your age, yeah. Homeless. Hungry. Spectacularly funny. You’re sure you don’t want any food? We’ve got plenty.”

“I’m good. I’ve had enough Cliff Bars to last me through several nights.” She shifted. “You were homeless?”

“Yeah.” Tess took a sip of rum. “Not for very long, but yeah. Maybe a couple weeks? Parents kicked me out, told me to find my own damn place to stay. So I did. Eventually.”

“How old were you?”

“Fifteen. Sixteen. I don’t remember, exactly. How old are you?”

“I’m fourteen.”

“That’s too damn young.” The rain carried on outside. Tess stared into the bottle for a few moments, and then raised her head. “You’re staying here tonight, right?”

“I was planning on waiting out the storm—”

“You know there’s a tornado watch on?”

“There’s— what? Seriously?”

“Don’t you have a phone?”

“I, uh..."

Months ago. Booted feet stomping her iPhone 6 to pieces in a rest stop parking lot.

“No, I don’t.”

“Well,” Tess said, raising her phone screen to Ellie’s eyes. TORNADO WATCH FOR JEFFERSON COUNTY IN EFFECT. “It’s a tornado watch, and there is no chance in Hell I’m letting you go back to the Diner in this weather. It’s probably closed, anyway.”

Ellie leaned back. “Fuck…” she sighed. It appeared she was staying. “I guess I’ll take the couch, then?”

Tess put her phone in her pocket. “Absolutely not. You can have the bedroom.”

“I— that, uh— I mean, I don’t want to impose—”

“Ellie.”

“Tess.”

“I offered it to you. I’m trying to be a good host, here. Let me have this. And besides, when was the last time you slept in a real bed?”

Ellie blinked and searched her memory. “About… uh… it was—”

“Exactly.” Tess motioned for Ellie to stand up. “Take the bed. I’ll take the couch.”

Ellie stood. “Are you sure? Like, for sure for sure?”

“Of course I am.”

“What about Joel? He’s just gonna sleep in the recliner?”

Tess looked at the sleeping man. “I suspect,” she said, “that he will go axe-murderer if anyone wakes him up. I can’t remember the last time he actually slept decently.”

Ellie looked at him for a moment. “Alright, well. Guess I’ll see you in the morning?”

“Yeah. Joel leaves around 9, so try and be up before then. And don’t leave without saying goodbye.”

“Alright. Fuckin' bossy.”

“Bite me.”

Ellie grinned and turned to go upstairs. Then she stopped.

“Hey, Tess.”

“Yup.”

“Does the bedroom lock?”

Tess put her hands behind her head. “Yeah,” she said. “It locks.”

“Rad. Night.”

“Night, Ellie.”

* * *

It did lock. Ellie gave the door multiple test pulls, pushes, and turns; it didn’t budge. But she still jammed a chair under the handle.

She started to slide off her jeans and then thought better of it and settled for taking off her shoes. She left them at the side of the bed, so she could roll off and slide in. Like a goddamn superhero.

Ellie sat on the edge of the bed and looked around the room. 

A few pictures of Joel and Tess on the dresser. A wooden elephant. The nightstand on her side of the bed sporting a half-open drawer. A desk with a computer against the wall. Next to that, a doored bookshelf actually containing books. On the walls, more framed photographs— some of which were signed. She hadn’t gotten a chance to read the signatures on the ones downstairs; she stood up to take a closer look.

_TL._

A seed of curiosity bloomed inside her. Ellie turned around and walked over to the computer. She jerked the mouse around a bit and the monitor lit up to reveal an open Google search. new foster parent tips. Several of the results were in purple. Ellie smiled faintly and opened a new tab. 

_TL photographer_

She skimmed through the first page of results. A few dormant Facebook pages; a MySpace account; an over-filtered Instagram page; a shitty HTML website. She couldn’t imagine Joel or Tess would be big enough fans of any of these guys to buy several signed photographs from them. 

She kept looking.

_www.TessLawrencePhotography.com_

It was at the bottom of the second page. If this wasn’t it, Ellie told herself, she’d give up and go to sleep. Maybe ask in the morning.

She clicked on the link. This was decidedly it. She knew this because, after scrolling through a few photos in the same style as the ones in the house, she came to an “ABOUT ME” section. The portrait there was very much the Tess she knew. She scrolled through the bio.

_Tess Lawrence is a moral deviant hailing from Fargo, North Dakota. Her weapon of choice is a rusty old Leica M6 that has stayed true throughout her entire career, from unknown amateur to world-famous rock-star professional. Her photography is a depraved blend of candid realism and absurdist nonsense that has knocked socks off everywhere. When she isn’t taking photos, she’s casting hexes on those who open this site and don’t buy anything. Buy something. Her seven children are starving._

Ellie smirked, closed the tab, and turned off the computer, satisfied. She walked back to the photos on the wall and genuinely looked at them.

A filthy man grabbing for a dollar bill in the middle of a busy sidewalk. A woman in an alleyway, holding a needle. A dog swallowing a sword. A guy dressed like Jack Sparrow shotgunning a lava lamp. An old man flashing the bird at the camera.

Ellie _hm_ ed approvingly and turned to go back to bed. As she did, she banged her thigh on the nightstand’s open drawer. She grunted and went to slam it closed, infuriated by this stupid fucking inanimate object, but then she noticed something inside.

An old photograph. Slightly crumpled. Joel and a young blonde girl, eleven or twelve. The girl raising a trophy to the sky and flashing a peace sign. Joel with his arm around her, positively beaming. Sun all over everything, bright and true.

“Oh,” Ellie said softly.

She nudged the drawer closed and stared at the empty space for seconds on seconds and then climbed into bed and rolled over and tried to disappear.


	4. Near-Life Experience

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the fairly long wait for a fairly short chapter; kinda fell into a slump there. i’m back on it now though  
> i still can make no promises about fast updates as i am incredibly lazy but i will try my best  
> and thank you for all of your lovely comments i appreciate them indescribably much :)

Joel snapped awake with a dead scream in his throat. His hands clenched into fists. He gasped and swallowed and took a moment to adjust to the darkness. This unfamiliar room not unfamiliar for long; he was in a recliner in his living room, and apparently he had actually gotten some sleep. He looked over at the couch and saw a dark figure lying there.

Ellie?...

He leaned closer.

Tess.

So if Tess was there… where the hell was Ellie? If she wasn’t here, she was either at the Diner, or…

He stood from the recliner and his knees felt their 47 years.

He knew that Tess would never let Ellie walk to the Diner in this weather, and he knew that Ellie was smarter than that anyway, so he ascended the stairs quietly and tested the bedroom’s door handle. Locked. Felt almost jammed.

He breathed and, his present worries put to rest, went downstairs. He could almost be at peace; his mind almost quiet enough for him to just return to the recliner and sleep until morning. But of course his dreams had set him thinking about Sarah.

He thought of her often, of course. Hard not to when goddamn _everything_ is a reminder of her. But he usually didn’t dwell on it. He’d push it to the side and move on. That was all he could do. Move on.

But sometimes his mind just wouldn’t let him. This was one of those times.

He crept through the living room and grabbed the guitar from its stand on the mantle. A few muted notes where his fingers touched the strings. 

He passed into the kitchen and, in a display of his ever-enviable luck, placed his foot directly onto the creakiest board in the house. He cringed and lifted it off, eliciting another creak; then he leaned back into the living room to see if he had woken Tess. She laid still. He sighed in relief and carefully snuck out to the back porch.

There were two rocking chairs out here. A few feet apart, they both looked silently out into the small swaying patch of trees behind the house. Joel took the one on the right, laid his guitar in his lap.

The storm had settled down. In the aftermath, water dripped from trees shaking like funeral-goers. 

One tree on the left rattled and creaked, almost ominously.

Joel flipped the instrument up and slid his fingers up and down the neck. They settled into an A minor 7 and he began to fingerpick a slow tune. It was cold out here. And lonely. He let these desperate notes warm him. 

He didn’t feel up to singing, but he hummed the words vaguely:

_“Helplessly hoping  
Her harlequin hovers nearby…”_

He imagined Sarah in the seat next to him, leaning her head back and closing her eyes and listening to him play. He imagined looking over at her, just looking at her one last time, but then of course half her face is missing and she's rotting and there's vomit in his throat, and his memories, and god...

He closed his eyes. He closed his eyes and the image fled and he strummed and strummed for what felt like hours until his fingers, his body, felt heavy and his eyes wouldn’t open back up and his arm dropped to his side and…

…he awoke from a dreamless sleep to a mind-blowingly loud _SNAPCRASHBOOM_ coming from everywhere at once. He was halfway through literally leaping out of his seat when he remembered the guitar, and he made a strangled effort to catch it. He tripped over something that sent him stumbling forward; he caught himself on the railing and the guitar clanged against it, making an awful discordant noise straight out of a horror film. 

Then everything fell silent.

It was a bright new morning. He still felt half-asleep. Everything was so quiet... what the hell had that sound been? He’d heard of “Exploding Head Syndrome” before, but it was one of those things that always happened to other people. And was it even supposed to happen in your sleep? He thought it only happened _before_ you fell asleep. Shit. Maybe he had some new, previously undiscovered illness. Like a zombie virus or something. Imagine that.

He realized he had a roaring headache. He groaned and turned around. First an Aspirin, then he’d call the doct…

He froze as he saw that less than a foot from the chair he had been sitting in, the deck floor had been shattered. Wooden shards laid strewn everywhere. A massive diagonal hole crossed the deck and ended just before the doorway; at the bottom of the rift, a tree trunk laid dead. Branches, rubble, and limbs. His eyes swung up and saw that there was a similar hole in the ceiling. He turned around. A giant tear in the wall. Through the hole, he saw that one tree on the left stood snapped near the base. The trunk’s corpse laid on the ground next to it, reaching and reaching and plowing through the deck.

The other chair had been completely destroyed.

“Holy shit,” came a voice from the doorway.

“Whaaat the fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck,” came another.

He turned back around. Tess and Ellie stood in the doorway, their eyes wide and unblinking.

“You motherfucking lucky son of a fucking bitch, holy fucking shit.”

That was Tess. Her voice cracking and choppy. Ellie just stood slack-jawed, lost for words for the first time since they’d met.

“Holy fucking smokes.”

 _Almost_ lost for words.

* * *

After Tess had hugged Joel for seven minutes straight while Ellie stood by and said words that even he would blush to repeat, and after they had informed several squadrons of concerned neighbors that _yes, everybody was fine,_ and _no, it was not an explosion,_ they all stood in the street outside the house and waited for the Fire Department to come and ensure the house wasn't going to blow up. Or something. It's what the Internet said to do.

“Well, this sucks,” Ellie said.

Tess detached herself from him. “You’re one lucky son of a bitch, Texas.”

“Yeah-- awwwww.”

Tess and Joel looked at her.

“You called him Texas.” She grinned. “That’s so cute.”

“Man, shut up,” Tess said. “Savage Fartlight.”

Ellie giggled. “What did you just call me?”

“I called you Savage Fartlight.”

“Would you look at that. Captain Shartvel likes fart jokes.”

“Yeah, I'm just full of surprises, Cunter Woman.”

“Whoa! Keep it PG, Tess.”

“Look who's talking.”

Joel stared at the concrete in dismay. 

A vehicle rolled up behind them.

“Thank you, Lord,” he muttered as he turned around. Then he saw that the vehicle was not, in fact, the fire truck he had so desperately been waiting for. It was a goddamn Subaru. Tess and Ellie came up on either side of him.

A woman with long black hair and glasses stepped out of the driver’s side. 

“You guys alright?” she asked.

Tess looked at Joel, who looked at her. 

“Yeah,” she replied. “We’re fine. Just a, uh, incident in the house.”

“Oh? What kind of incident?" She adjusted her glasses. "If I may ask?” she added.

“Sort of a homicidal Mother Nature kind of incident…”

Their conversation faded out as arguably the most beautiful girl Ellie had ever seen stepped out of the passenger’s side. Her black hair tied up in a bun behind her head; freckles sprinkled across her face; rippling brown eyes...

She leaned onto the hood and looked at the sky. A dull rhythm emanated from where she tapped her fingers on the metal.

“Ohhhh, wow…” Ellie breathed.

“What?” Joel said.

“She’s really hot…”

Joel looked confused and a brief panic seized Ellie as she realized what she had just said.

But Joel just hmm'd. “Ten bucks says you can’t get her phone number,” he said.

Ellie blinked, and then relaxed. “Joel, I am literally impoverished.”

“Twenty bucks.”

”Aren’t you gonna need that money? Seeing as a fucking tree just fell on your house?”

”You say that like you’re gonna win.”

Ellie looked at him. “You’re on, old man.”

She walked pseudo-confidently over to the girl, who was leaning against the front of the car. Tragically, by the time Ellie realized she had no idea how to start this conversation, she was already standing in front of the girl.

She inhaled. “H-hello,” she said, in an incredibly high voice. She coughed. “Hello,” she said, in an incredibly low voice.

The girl cocked her head. “Hello…?” she said, with a smile.

“Sorry.” Ellie rubbed her eyebrow. “Had a moment there.”

“It happens to the best of us.”

“Yeah.” Ellie looked at the ground and then back up. “Sooooo—”

The girl laughed. Extended her hand. “I’m Dina.” Ellie shook her hand. “What’s your name?”

“Uhhhhhhhhhh—” Ellie coughed. “I’m, um, Ellie. Ellie. Williams. Ellie Williams.” 

Dina smiled brightly. “It’s good to meet you, Ellie.”

“You too… Di… uh…”

“Dina.”

“Dina. Right. Dina.”

Ellie snapped her eyes to the right. She saw Joel observing her ineptitude with an incredibly satisfied smile on his face. 

She straightened up. “Are you, uh, from around here, Dina?”

“Oh, yeah. We’re practically neighbors. As in, that,” she turned and pointed at the house just across the street, “is my house.”

A bubble of happiness grew in Ellie’s stomach. “Wait, for real?”

_Don’t fuck this up. DON’T FUCK THIS UP._

“Nooooo, I’m lying,” she said with an incredibly deep frown. Ellie mirrored it. “I live in a swamp in South Dakota. I'm just visiting.”

Ellie blinked. “Wait, for real?”

“ _No,_ dummy,” Dina laughed. "No, I live over there."

“Oh.”

She smiled and gestured at Joel’s house. “You’re from over _there_ , I’m assuming?”

“Uh…” _Shit. Shit. Shit sticks._ “It’s complicated.”

Dina cocked her head. “What do you mean?”

“I mean…” Ellie rubbed the back of her neck. “I’m not _technically_ from anywhere right now, if you… get my drift.” 

Dina blinked. Her eyes then widened for a moment. “Oh! You mean— you’re homeless? Or, uh, foster care?”

“Homeless.”

“Mmmmm… well, here…” she pulled out a tissue and a pen from her jacket pocket, scribbled something on the tissue, and handed it to Ellie. “It’s not used,” she said. “Promise.”

Ellie took it. She looked at the writing: _205-892-0289_.

“Just-- if you ever need anything, you know.” Dina held her thumb to her ear and her pinky to her mouth. “Gimme a ring. We have a guest house.” She winked.

_Is she flirting? Or just being charming? Fuck fuck fuck fuck **shit.**_

“But I’ve gotta go now,” Dina said. “My sister and I have groceries and shit.” 

“Your sister?” Ellie looked at the woman with the glasses. “Is that her?”

Dina followed her gaze. “Yup.” She smiled and began walking back to the truck. “I’ll see you around, Ellie.”

Ellie watched her walk for a few seconds before moving over to Joel, who now had a much less satisfied look on his face.

“Two oh five, eight nine two, zero two eight nine,” Ellie said.

“Yeah, yeah,” Joel muttered, digging into his pocket, “Good job, well done, nice going.” He pulled out his wallet and drew two twenty dollar bills from the main pocket.

“I didn’t even have to ask her,” Ellie said as she took the money.

“Women,” he grumbled.

Ellie smiled. 

In the span of a second, hundreds of moments ran through her head. Joel standing in the pouring rain in the mouth of that alleyway. Joel telling her about the Diner. Her mother's letter. Ellie waking up, sweating, alone in her booth. Hannah stomping her phone to pieces. Joel holding conversation. Watching Rambo. Tess offering her the bedroom. Someone caring. Joel avoiding death by nothing but a few inches.

She looked at the ground. “Hey, Joel?”

“Hm.”

“About the foster thing.”

He paused for a second. “Yeah?”

She put a hand around her right pointer and middle fingers. Squeezed and loosened subconsciously. “I think I’ll take you up on it.”

He turned to her. “You’re deciding that _now_?”

“Hey, man, with a near-death experience comes newfound clarity, and, you know, all that.”

“Yeah. Well, uh…”

He patted his thighs rhythmically. Neither of them knew what to say. They’d have to work on that.

He took a step towards her. Went in for a quiet side hug—

“Whoaaaanohugsplease.” She flinched away. 

He stepped back. “Sorry.”

“It’s alright. Just—”

“Yeah.”

“Right.”

“I get it.” 

“Rad.”

They stood in silence for a moment, before Ellie reached up and gave his arm a squeeze.

“But thanks,” she said.

“For what?”

“Y’know. Everything.”

“Oh.” He patted her shoulder haltingly. “Yeah. No problem.”

Ellie crossed her arms and leaned slowly into his side. 

It was cold out here. They didn’t mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> song in this chapter is Helplessly Hoping by Crosby, Stills, & Nash. it's in the game :)


	5. Wouldn’t You Like to Know, Weather [Girl]

Into the Wilderness, down the main road, onto a service road, kicking up dust, park on the shoulder, into the forest, an overgrown path, birds and squirrels, trees pressing in, tight, tight, until you’re suddenly standing in a clearing. Sheer and wide. From a claustrophobic’s nightmare to a claustrophobic’s dream. There is a rusted car near the center. No one knows how it got there. 

Most people don’t know about this place. Of those that do, only three bother coming.

A line of cans stood on a long plank they had set up on two large rocks months ago. Remarkably, the cans had never been knocked off by wind or animal. The plank was never disturbed. Everything they did here remained untouched, as if in isolation from the rest of the world.

And now she stood about twenty yards from the cans, lifted the sight to her eyes… 

The BB pistol went off with a soft _thoosh_ and sent a can flinging off the plank.

Riley thrust both arms into the air and shouted a very loud “WHOO! Hell yeah!” 

She spun the gun on her right pointer finger and turned to face the boy behind her. “Get _fucked_ , Eisenberg!”

Jesse grimaced. “Why are you so excited all of a sudden?”

“Because it’s late in the game and every bottle fuckin’ counts, man!”

He shook his head and pushed off the rusty car he leaned on.

“It was a lucky shot.”

“ _Lucky_ shot?” Riley slid her foot back and forth where she stood to form a mark in the grass. “That was not luck, Jesse, that was the product of grit, power, and intellect, all coming together to create—”

“You're stupid. Give me the gun.”

“—the perfect shot. You interrupted me.” 

“You were rambling, man.”

“I was not,” she said as walked over to him and handed the weapon off. “Let’s see you do any better.” She leaned on the car.

“Oh, easy.” He walked over to the spot she had marked and took five steps back. “2020 Olympics, here I come.” He lifted the sight to his eye, aimed down at the line of cans… put his finger on the trigger…

(Riley considered shouting to throw him off, but decided against it.)

…fired off a round and sent another one flying. 

“Yeah!”

“Goddammit.” Riley said. 

Jesse turned around with a devilish smirk on his face. “That, Riley, was the product of grit, power, and intellect, all coming together to create the perfect—”

“‘ThaT, riLeY wAs thE PrOdUcT Of gRit, PoWeR, ANd InTEllEcT’— That’s you. That’s what you sound like.” She pushed off the car. “And we’re not even done yet, shitstick. I haven’t missed.” 

“But we both know I’m winning.” Jesse marked his spot in the grass and handed her the gun.

“Whatever you say, pissbaby.” Riley took it and moved to his mark. 

She retreated five steps. “Hey, when’s your girlfriend getting here?” 

Jesse sighed. “She is not my girlfriend.”

Riley looked at him. He looked at her. 

“She’s _not._ ”

She shook her head and turned back to the task at hand. “All I’m saying,” she said, “is that I’ve seen the fuckin’ _’Oh, mi amor!’_ eyes you two’re always making at each other. It’s disgusting.” 

She inhaled deeply and fired. Another bottle departed, leaving five more. “Nice.”

“It’s— that’s not— it’s actually, really not like that at all—”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever you say,” she said as she turned around. “It’s okay, man. There’s only a little shame in being horrifically horny.”

“This, from the girl who _literally_ drools staring at Juliet Aberdeen all through fourth.”

Riley immediately flushed. “Shut up.”

“Mhm. _‘Oh, mi amor.’_ ”

She dropped the gun. “Shut _up,_ man!”

“No, no, you two would be cute,” Jesse said, putting up his hands in a placating gesture. “I think you have a chance. I mean, aside from the fact she’s straighter than me and also probably pregnant—”

Riley practically leapt the distance between them and, with one smooth motion, had Jesse in a headlock in an atomic second. He yelped and began squirming wildly in an attempt to escape.

“Let me go!”

“Say sorry, bitch!”

“No!”

She slapped him on the back.

“Ah! I’m sorry, bitch!”

“With _feeling,_ thou heartless hetero!”

“Am I interrupting something?”

They both made noises of surprise at the new (familiar) voice. Riley looked up as she buried her razor-sharp elbow into the back of his head. He let out an _“urgh”_ at the contact.

Dina stood a few yards away, looking between the two of them, framed by the bare trees and the path she had followed to get here. She was holding a paper bag emblazoned with the _Abe’s Donuts_ logo: a man wearing a stovepipe hat made of, appropriately, donuts.

“H-Hi, Dina,” Jesse mumbled. 

Dina looked at him and smiled widely. “Hey, Jesse.”

He batted Riley’s arm from his head and straightened up. She slapped him on the shoulder. He slapped her back. Riley entered a karate stance. “Motherfucker, I will _kill_ you—”

Dina raised the bag. 

“I brought donuts.”

Riley’s head swiveled around. “Oh, fuck yeah!”

* * *

They sat on the car. 

“I want the jelly one.”

“ _I_ want the jelly one.”

“Fuck you, I earned it.”

“You almost broke my skull with your elbow.”

“Yeah, exactly!”

“You guys know there’s another donut?”

“But that one’s not jelly, now is it, Dina? Jesse, I swear to God.”

Jesse kept his hand in the bag, attached to the powdered jelly donut at the bottom. Riley, gripping the same donut, felt the edge of his hand on hers. She looked Dina in the eyes and dramatically put her free hand to her chest.

_“Please,”_ she mouthed.

Dina began to sigh, but then her mouth morphed into a grin. She proceeded to rest her chin on Jesse’s shoulder. He went red and blew out his cheeks, eliciting a smirk from Riley.

“Jesse,” she murmured.

“Yo,” he replied too loudly.

“Please give Riley the donut.”

She put her hand on the arm that was holding said donut and gently urged it up. The donut lifted out of the bag and hung in the air, still gripped by both Jesse and Riley.

“But jelly’s the best flavor, man.”

“Mm. I got the other one for you.”

Jesse blinked, and then glanced inside at the donut Riley knew was in the shape of a heart because Dina got Jesse a heart-shaped donut every time she got them donuts from her dad’s shop but Jesse never realized what they meant or even noticed, really, because the boy was somehow even dumber than he looked. The only way Dina could get any more obvious, or any more corny, was a fucking marriage proposal on New Year's under moonlight and fireworks. 

Or she could just, like, tell him like a normal person. That might help.

He saw the heart inside the bag and his grip loosened; sensing an opportunity, Riley yanked the donut away.

Or she tried to, anyway. Jesse didn’t have many things going for him, but he did have good reflexes. 

Jesse squeezed. Riley squeezed.

The third law of motion states that for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. This law applies to absolutely everything, all the time. Dumbasses fighting over fresh-baked goodness included.

Thus, jelly squirted out of two ends of the donut.

“Oh, well now you’ve done it,” Dina said.

**“JESSE, YOU DUMB FUCK!”**

* * *

Chaos to calm.

Riley and Jesse decided to split the donut, now containing significantly less jelly, in half. It was a compromise Riley had resisted at first, but one that she gave into simply because she was getting tired of all this donut business. 

Now, three minutes later, she brushed her hands together. Powder lifted off her skin in thin white clouds. A chilly wind through the trees sent them swirling and she shivered, zipped up her too-thin jacket.

Music emanated from Dina’s phone. It was slow and warm and whole. Riley was leaning the back of her head on Jesse’s shoulder, her eyes angled at the wandering sky, watching the birds swim. She tapped along to the song’s beat on her thighs and listened to two of her best friends talk and thought, in a brief moment of mundane splendor, that she would do anything for them.

If only Ellie were here.

_(“…I am a feeling  
And time is a long wave  
And it cares  
It cares about us all the same…”)_

That old scar roared anew.

“Oh,” Dina said, interrupting Riley’s thoughts and her own story about shoplifting Bob Dylan vinyls with her sister, “did I tell you guys I met someone real fuckin’ interesting this morning?”

“No,” Jesse replied. He had finished his half in thirty seconds flat, and was now finishing off the donut Dina got for him.

“Okay.” She turned to face them. “I was coming home, right, from the grocery store, with Talia, and there’s a group of three people standing outside the house across from mine. And, uh, two of them were just the neighbors. I see them every day. But today there was a new girl with them.”

“Like a little girl?” Riley asked.

“About our age.”

“Oh, nice. Was she cute?”

Dina considered this for a moment. “I mean, she was pretty. Kinda had a string bean thing going on. But I’ve already got my eye on someone, at the moment. So my perception’s kinda skewed.”

Jesse made no reaction, even when Dina’s gaze shifted to him. He took a bite out of the heart-shaped donut and Riley wondered how much longer she could watch this go on until she had to intervene.

“But, uh, anyways, my sister wants to talk to them because ‘why are they just standing outside their house?’ and so she gets out and goes up to the woman, and I get out because it was a nice day and you know Talia, her conversations just go on and on. So I’m there leaning against the hood of the car and I see the man say something to the girl and then the girl walks over to me, and I think she was trying to be confident but it wasn’t really working, because when she started talking to me she couldn’t really form a complete sentence—”

“She’s into you,” Riley said.

“What?”

“She’s probably just awkward,” Jesse said.

“Yeah, probably, but she’s probably also into you.”

“How do we even know she likes girls? We don’t know this girl. She could’ve just been, like—”

“Dina, was she wearing a flannel?”

Dina nodded. Riley grinned. Jesse muttered something about toxic stereotypes.

“Well,” Dina said. “That’s unfortunate. For her, I mean. I’ll probably never see her again.” She took a bite. “Wait, no. I gave her my number. So I might.”

“You did?” Jesse said. “Wh— did she ask for it?”

“No. I gave it to her because she’s homeless.”

Riley sat up.

“And, you know, I thought she might need a place to stay sometime, so. I gave her my number. Just in case.”

“You said she’s homeless?”

“That’s what she said.”

Jesse giggled.

“Well,” Dina said. “she implied it. And then I asked for clarification. And _then_ she said she’s homeless.”

“What did this girl look like?” Riley asked, as she turned to face them. Jesse looked at her, intrigued. She hardly saw him.

Dina closed her eyes. “She had… sort of, reddish hair. Medium length. Some freckles. Oh, and blue eyes. Really blue eyes, I liked them.” She opened her own. “Why?”

Riley tapped her thighs. A growing pit in her stomach. “Just curious. And, uh, also in the interest of curiosity, did she happen to tell you her—”

“What the hell was that?” Jesse said simultaneously, sitting up.

A silence fell across the clearing.

“What?” Riley asked, a little irritated.

“There was something…”

Dimly, muffled: a whimper. 

“You hear that?”

Dina got off the car. “Yeah.”

Jesse and Riley followed suit.

The sound was somewhere nearby, or at least, nearby enough to hear. It was hard to tell exactly where.

“Riley, do your… listening thing,” Dina said.

Riley nodded. Then she stood still, closed her eyes, and _listened._ (She wasn’t sure if closing her eyes actually did anything, but it felt right.) 

A pained moan…

…to the right.

“It’s over here,” she said, and set off in the direction of the sound. 

Riley and Dina followed her closely. They passed across the clearing and into the woods, the pinecones and fallen leaves crunching under their feet, the sunlight burning through the bare tree limbs, the squirrels leaping and dashing— all shadowed by the dull beginnings of a migraine in Riley’s head. She looked up and saw black clouds crawling over the edge of the sky. A curse slid from her mouth and she sped up on her course towards the sound, which was getting nearer and more pitiful by the second.

The three of them came upon the source.

They all stood silent.

And then, all in unison: “ **Shit.** ”

* * *

Calm to chaos.

They burst out of the forest and onto the service road, the dog moaning in Jesse’s arms.

“Shit, shit, shit, shit,” Riley muttered. She patted her pockets as the three came to her truck, parked on the side of the road. Where were those fucking…

“Dina!” she barked. “Keys!”

“Shit, right.” Dina reached into her back pocket and pulled out Riley’s keys and was about to toss them over when she saw something above Riley's head. “Hey, should I drive? Since there’s a storm—”

“I’ll be fine! Give me the fucking keys!”

Dina did. Riley unlocked the truck and clambered into the driver’s seat; meanwhile, Dina opened the back door. Jesse climbed in with the dog. Dina followed. 

The engine roared out when Riley turned the ignition. She groaned; her headache was getting worse and the engine was so loud and holy shit, _she_ might be alive, but that had to wait because they had a dog with a goddamn arrow in its head and everything fucking sucked. 

Suddenly, the radio began shouting.

_“Everything is **AWESOME!!!**_  
_Everything is cool when—”_

Riley spun the volume knob to zero. She flashed a glance into the back seat and saw Jesse, wide-eyed and a little shell-shocked, holding the dog in his lap. The arrow was driven clear through the top of the dog’s head. If Riley believed in miracles, the fact that it was still alive, that the arrow had clearly missed most of its brain, would be one. But she didn’t. This was luck, and it was running out with every passing second.

She put her eyes to the road and stepped on the gas. She drew her phone from its place in the glove compartment and activated Siri.

“Directions to the nearest animal hospital.”

The robot thought for a moment. And another moment. There was barely any service out here. Riley was just about to lose her shit when:

_“Starting route to Whitrio River Animal Hospital. Head east on Calypso Springs Road.”_

She sped up, peeling off the service road and onto the main road. She turned right and headed east on Calypso Springs Road.

The trees whipping by. A speed limit sign read 25 MPH; the speedometer read 40. The hospital was 12 minutes away. There was a dog with an arrow through its head in the backseat. Riley considered all this information and made a decision.

She sped up.

“Hey,” Dina said softly. Riley wasn’t sure who she was talking to until she said: “I can take him.”

There was a moment of silence, and Riley felt a strange anxiety building until she heard them slide the dog over from lap to lap.

And then a brief wave of nausea and her headache grew deeper. If her doctor was to be believed, this was because the barometric pressure was changing with the incoming storm, and that it would only get worse the closer said storm got. Sometimes she could feel them coming hours in advance. Ever since she was a kid.

But she felt two storms coming now.

Riley shook it off. 

She had to keep pushing. She had to.

She had to.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’ve made the decision to dial Jesse’s Dumb Baby Juice levels up to 100 for this story, so if he seems a little OOC, that’s probably why. or maybe i’m just a bad writer. who really knows.


	6. Fuck Steve

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello :)

Ellie and her mother in Bangor. It was the only time they stayed in a hotel room; a Quality Inn near the edge of town. Ellie at the 3rd floor window and looking over the blinking town— the stars muted by the lights, her hearing muted by the concert— and listened to The Milk Carton Kids on her new iPod while her mother showered in the bathroom.

_Could hope have sprung eternal on darkened, dreary roads?  
The heart that beats nocturnal knows not where it goes  
We listened for the signal to raise the dirt again  
Our livelihood is equal to the air that breathes us in._

Ellie thought that if all hotel rooms were like this one, she loved all hotel rooms. She loved the smell. She loved the premade beds, she loved the view, she loved the free breakfast and the room service and the vending machine and, especially, the elevator.

Most hotel rooms she stayed in later _were_ like that one. She hated all of them. The food tasted awful and the beds were ratty and stiff and the shower water was never right. She stayed in them under the watch of government agents in between foster homes as her neck laid bent over thin pillows, sorer every night. She stared out the window at a Boston crusted with smog and listened to the Milk Carton Kids on her old iPhone 6.

_I'd love nothing more than to cover my face  
Forget who I am and get out of this place  
Pretend to be somebody other than me  
And go on living that way_

Her mind wheeled backwards to when the water stopped running and her mother stepped out of the bathroom, hair damp and messy, and Ellie would remember this as the last time she thought of her as perfect. 

* * *

Ellie stepped into the hotel room. It smelled exactly like she knew it would.

Most of the damage from the tree fiasco was to the porch. A few branches had hit the main house, but it wasn’t catastrophic. The problem was the gas line. Said gas line was buried under the porch. The fire department said that the risk didn’t appear significant, but had suggested the three stay in a hotel or at a friend’s house until it was fixed, just in case. 

Ellie considered Dina’s house, but dropped that idea almost as soon as she thought of it. Joel told her that she was staying at a hotel with them. She asked if she had a choice. He answered simply that she did not.

That was how she ended up face down on a hotel bed in downtown Birmingham. For all her hatred of them, she had to admit they were better than diner booths. Not quite as good as Joel and Tess’s bed, though. She noticed them talking behind her, but her brain was too lost in visions of Savage Starlight and her own long past to pay attention to the words. A door opened and closed.

“What was that?” she said into the pillow.

“Joel’s taking a shit,” came the reply.

“Rad.” 

Five minutes later, she groaned audibly and rolled over. “I’m so fucking hungryyyyy.”

“Then eat some damn food,” Tess said.

“I don’t have anyyyy.”

“What do you waaaaaaant?”

“I don’t caaaaaaaaaaare.”

“Uhhhhhhhhhrgggggghhhhhhhh okay.” She sat up. “How does McDonald’s sound?”

Ellie leapt up to her feet, suddenly brimming with energy. “That sounds goddamn fucking excellent.”

“Yeah. Great.” 

Tess grunted as she stood up. Ellie bounced impatiently. The two began walking towards the door. 

“Joel!” Tess called as they passed the bathroom. 

“What?”

“We’re getting some fucking McDONALDS,” Ellie said. “Do you want anything?”

There was a moment of silence. Then: “Strawberry milkshake.”

“What size?”

“What do you think?”

“Alright. See you!”

“Bye—” Tess attempted as she was dragged out the door.

* * *

Joel flushed the toilet and stepped up to the sink, adjusting his belt. He turned the right handle and spilled warm water out of the faucet. His callouses brushed against each other as he squirted soap onto his palm and rubbed his hands together. His eyes watched them go.

Joel alone in the graveyard. The dirt still fresh and black. It was a warm and blue-skied day. He stared at the gravestone a long, long time, and then stood up and went back to the car where Virginia and Sarah were waiting.

His hands were red and raw. He shut off the faucet and flicked the water off his skin.

* * *

Ellie and Tess stepped to the front of the line. A girl, no older than fifteen, sporting a long blonde braid stared at them. Rather: she stared behind them, until Tess said “ma’am?” and her attention snapped to them. 

“Hiwelcometomcdonald’swhatcanigetyou,” she said. It was less of a sentence and more of a single word. Her name tag read simply Abby — Cashier.

Tess blinked. “What was that?”

“Hi and welcome to McDonald’s,” she said in a low-budget text-to-speech translator voice. “What can I get you.”

Ellie grinned. “I’ll have a Big Mac.”

The girl tapped something into the monitor.

“And quarter pounder with cheese. Three hamburger Happy Meals. Also, a four piece Chicken McNuggets. And could I get an iced coffee—”

Tess cut her off with a desperate laugh. “She’s joking! Ha! She hates coffee. She’ll have a singular Big Mac.”

“And a strawberry shake.”

“And a strawberry shake.”

“And one for Joel.”

“And another strawberry shake.”

Ellie grinned widely. The cashier girl looked between the two of them and then tapped on the monitor.

“What sizes?”

“Large and large!” Ellie said immediately.

“Okay.” She looked up. “And what can I get you. Other person.”

Tess exhaled. “I’ll have a, uh, Quarter Pounder with cheese. Please. And an unsweet tea.”

“M’kay. Oh, shit, for here or to go?”

“To go.”

“Thank you please pay.”

The card reader flashed the total price. Ellie watched Tess draw a green Regions card out of her wallet and slide it into the chip reader at the bottom.

And thus began the long-ass wait. 

* * *

Joel stood in front of the muted TV. Pacing back and forth slowly. His phone to his ear.

“…What?… because a goddamn tree fell on my house. I told you that. I _couldn’t_ come in… I wasn’t just gonna make her take care of it… because that ain’t right… yeah… what?… for _that?_ … you’re joking… don’t you think it’s a touch extreme?… come on, Steve… I’ve never missed work… check the records, everything’s on the records… what?… no… ah, forget it. Forget it. Fuck you, Steve.”

He shoved his phone in his pocket and ran two hands down his face.

“Shit.”

* * *

“This is the best goddamn milkshake I’ve ever had in my life.”

Ellie and Tess passed into the lobby. The receptionist raised a hand at them in greeting. Ellie waved back.

“You’re in a good mood,” Tess said. They started towards the elevators.

“Mm.” Ellie took a sip of her shake. “I guess I am.”

“Why?”

They stopped in front of the metal doors. Ellie pressed the up button and it turned orange. “It’s a good fucking milkshake, man. What else can I say?”

The doors immediately opened. 

A woman stood in the middle of the elevator, facing them. A brown hood drawn over her head shadowed her face, but Ellie could just make out the white scars running from the corners of her mouths to her cheeks.

She stood there, with her head angled down. It was silent except for the faint lobby music. No one made a move.

Tess coughed. The woman began walking forwards. The two parted to let her pass. She mumbled to herself and went off down the hallway.

Tess and Ellie looked at each other. Tess shrugged. Ellie took a sip of her milkshake. 

“That was fuckin’ weird,” she said. 

They stepped inside. The doors closed and the elevator began rising. Moments later, the lights popped off and the elevator stopped rising.

There was silence in the capsule.

“Fuck,” one of them said.

* * *

“Auuuuuuurrrrrgggghhhhh uuuuuhhh boom boom choo cha boom boom choo cha boom boom choo cha—”

“Would you relax?”

Ellie stopped pacing the darkened elevator. She took her hands out of her pockets and then put them back in. Felt the cool metal of her switchblade. Then she hopped once in place. Then again. Then she began walking back and forth _and_ hopping. Tess groaned in the blackness.

“Ellie—”

“How long did you say it would be?”

“I don’t fucking know. Not long. They’re a hotel, it’ll be back soon.”

“It’s been like 5 minutes.”

“Oh no! We might just starve right here.”

“I know!” 

Ellie walked over to the corner of the elevator and picked up her milkshake. She took a long sip.

“I don’t even have a will,” she said.

“Do you have anything to give?”

“Ouch, Tess! That’s low.”

“Sorry.”

“I could give, like, my knife.”

“To who?”

“Fuckin… Michael. Hey, how’d you know I don’t like coffee?”

“Joel told me.”

“Did he?”

“He did.”

“Wowza.”

“Yup.”

They remained in silence. Ellie ran out of her milkshake but kept sipping. The sound of the straw sucking up air immensely loud in the silence.

“Could you fucking stop?” Tess snapped.

Ellie stopped. She lowered the cup from her mouth and sat down. 

“Sorry,” she said.

They could hear talking through the walls. 

“It’s fine,” Tess said.

Neither of them said anything. 

Tess broke the silence. “I’m sorry.” 

There was still no reply. She continued: “I shouldn’t have—”

“You, uh, still wanna know why I was in such a good mood?” Ellie said. 

“Sure.”

“I… can’t remember the last time someone, you know, got me something. I mean, Joel paid for me the first night at the diner, but, I mean, you know, the last time someone actually went with me and ordered with me and paid for it and, uh, all that. Not that I don't appreciate him. Doing that. I just. It. Know what I mean?”

Tess nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well. Uh. Great.”

The lights came on in a surge of brightness. Ellie covered her eyes with her hand and nearly dropped the milkshake. The elevator jerked and dropped an inch.

“Ohhh, we’regonnafuckingdie,” she said.

“We are not.”

“We’re so fucking dead. We’re gonna free-fall and die horribly and—”

They began moving slowly upwards.

Tess looked at Ellie.

Ellie looked at Tess.

“Shut up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please note i have no intention of ever abandoning this story  
> also, as i have said before: even if i don't reply, know i appreciate your comments more than i can begin to describe  
> thank you all infinitely


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